


You will be whole again but you will never be the same

by Pseudothyrum



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Five Stages of Grief, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-19
Updated: 2014-06-19
Packaged: 2018-02-04 07:19:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1770436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pseudothyrum/pseuds/Pseudothyrum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five moments of mourning for Beverly Katz</p>
            </blockquote>





	You will be whole again but you will never be the same

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the kinkmeme prompt "(Denial and Isolation, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance.) Five different characters or points of view who grieve for Beverly"

_Denial and isolation._

No. It’s the first thing either of them can say, and Brian may be saying it but it might as well be both of them, because it’s the only thing that even makes sense. No, no, no. Jimmy is shaking, it started with his head, and now his hands are trembling and he can’t stop. This cannot be real. They retreat together to the lab, where bodies laid out on slabs and samples of necrotic tissue are more comforting than Jack’s words could ever be. More real than his words could ever be. They stand together, alone, and they murmur to each other that it must be some mistake, that it can’t be her, it can’t be Bev, not our Bev, no. She wouldn’t leave us like this. This is all wrong. People come to speak with them but they do not hear them because they are numb, and they do not respond because they are numb, and it isn’t true. It isn’t true. 

The world breaks through the dam, the world always has to break through. They cry together, alone. 

_Anger._

On the surface he is calm. Still water, untroubled by the movement all around that has sought to disturb it. Far, far below the surface a current surges and it sweeps up everything in its path, entangling every feeling and every thought in its violence and its power. He feels like he is boiling from the inside, choking and drowning and burning all at once. The only thing keeping his head above the surface, his body still, his voice caged in his throat, is the knowledge of who to blame. He set Beverly on her path, he put her in Hannibal’s sights. But it was Hannibal who killed her. He knows what must be done.

Someone has to be hurt for this, to calm the rising tide within him, to turn this pain into something righteous. He knows who has to be hurt. 

_Bargaining._

It is Jack who goes to speak to her family in the end. He goes to the door and stands for what feels like years, his thoughts drowning out the normal sounds of life on the street behind him. He couldn’t be farther from it now, adrift on dry land. Finally he knocks and a woman appears. He speaks, though he doesn’t really hear himself. He watches the woman’s face contort and then she is crying and a man is there, and they speak and he is supporting his wife, half carrying her into the living room where they collapse together. Please tell us this isn’t true, they say, we’ll give you anything. We’ll give you anything to tell us this was a mistake. Her mother lifts her face to the heavens and she begs, and Jack has to look away. He hardly knows these people, has only heard Beverly talk about them a few times, but in this moment he knows them better than anything, better even than himself, and he can’t look at them. He wants to tell them he will avenge their daughter, but he says nothing because he knows that vengeance is poor repayment for what they have lost. This is not the deal they want struck.

Alone in the car afterwards, he lifts his eyes skyward, and he offers himself in exchange. 

_Depression._

She feels... off. Wrong, somehow, but she doesn’t know why. It creeps up on her after her meeting with Graham, after writing his murderous love letters. Everything turns grey, or perhaps it always was, and she can’t find the will to take delight in even the splashes of red that used to colour her days. She finds she doesn’t want to speak to anyone and she locks herself away. She builds walls that become mazes, and she lurks in the centre of them, a bent and twisted creature. The walls grow higher and ever more complex, so that everyone who enters becomes lost. Perhaps she can make them as lost as she is. The curtains are drawn but it’s not dark enough to hide what she can’t stop seeing. She can’t look at the pictures she took of her, but that’s alright, because her mind’s eye is more than happy to recreate them. She hears dripping in her dreams, blood on the water.

She wakes up and she is crying; she doesn’t know if she will ever stop. 

_Acceptance._

He comes upon her suddenly, arms around her throat, a parody of an embrace. Her mouth opens to seek air and she fights with every ounce of strength, but she knows it is futile; she can feel herself slipping away, slipping beneath the surface. In her last moments of consciousness, blackness spilling into the corners of her eyes, she makes her peace with this. She will not give Hannibal her dignity, she will not let him take everything. It is her life that he is taking, but it is her death that she is going to. She owns this, Hannibal can never take it away from her, this last moment of peace. She lets her thoughts drift on the sea that’s rising over her head, builds a safe haven for her friends on the storm-tossed water, her last lights as the lights begin to go out. 

She hopes they will be safe.


End file.
